Tuesday, September 3, 2013

For the third daily challenge we have the color yellow. I love yellow. I knew immediately what I wanted to do for this day as well. This design has been done to death recently with the release of Despicable Me 2 but I wanted my shot at it too and it will have a tie in or two come the rest of the challenge.

The middle finger is my favorite.

I am so happy with the way it came out. I had some camera issues and should be updating this with better pictures as soon as I can but still even with a blurry iPhone camera these are adorable. For the yellow I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Lightening. The blue is Revlon Top Speed in Superstitious. This is a fantastic blue polish. I can not say enough about it. The black is Sinful Colors in Black on Black. The eyeballs are Sinful Colors Snow Me White. For the goggles I used China Glaze Holographic in Cosmic Dust. That was genius! The eyes to me are my favorite part. My boyfriend said they looked like real googly eyes. Lastly the mouth is Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Fuchsia Flare.

I hope I can do this again when my nails grow out so I have more room for facial expression and for hair or perhaps I will make shorter pants. I am loving how due to my inconsistent nail lengths I have short fat minions and tall skinny ones.

There is a bit of a rainbow effect in this challenge for the first few days. After red comes orange. I have 40 different shades of orange in my current stash and was stoked to create nail art with this color. I knew immediately what I wanted to accomplish with the design. Initially I wanted to do 5 little cat faces on my nails using the Bundle Monster stamp M91 but it was just too tiny. The background was too dark and it didn't show up. Thankfully I have a very honest boyfriend who gives me legitimate and critical feedback and I was able to change things up. I am thrilled with how it turned out. It was even better than I imagined it.

This ended up being so appropriate as well because I had just bought tickets to a speaking engagement with Jackson Galaxy the cat behaviorist. I am a huge fan and actually applied to be on his show "My Cat From Hell" but I never heard back. My nail art is a tribute to a very special cat named Link. He's one of the reason's I wanted Jackson to come here. Link belonged to a friend of mine named Kurt. He was rescued by Kurt at a flea market in 2008 and is a little on the strange side. In 2010 Kurt was diagnosed with Leukemia and was told he could no longer keep his cats due to health reasons and was forced to give up Link. At the time I had already just taken on a new kitten that showed up and had enough cats but knew Link would never make it in a shelter due to his issues.

Kurt passed away in February of 2011 and now Link is all I have left of him. It means the world to me to have saved this little guy and every time I look at him I think of my best friend.

So without further ado, here is my Link inspired nail art.

For this I used some older polishes including the base which was Cover Girl Peaches & Cream from the mid 90's. It was part of a parfait collection. I then used the saran wrap technique to add Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Man-go Team!. I hand painted the rest of the designs. The black is my trusty Sinful Colors in Black on Black and the white is also from Sinful Colors in Snow Me White. I sponged on the chin with a makeup sponge. For the eyes I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Chartreuse Chase and the nose is China Glaze textured polish in Itty, Bitty & Gritty. I smudged a bit when I used Seche Vite which isn't supposed to happen but it was perfect because his nose felt like a kitty nose. Seriously too cute for words!!!

When I think of red nails I think of two things. I think sophistication and I think rockabilly 1950's. I am neither of those things. I have only wore a few red manicures in recent years and mostly upon request from the other half because he happens to find red nails to be sexy.

What I had in my head and what I finished are not the same. I ended up choosing a simple matte finish polish called Get It On by Sinful Colors from the Leather Luxe collection. These polishes are awesome. I picked up 4 of them and want to get the rest. The formula on this one was bit tricky because it did not want to level out. I then just did a simple stamp with China Glaze Ruby Pumps using Mash plate 48 for the flames. It looked way different under different lighting and I found that to be a fun and unexpected "feature" of this manicure. I preferred it with the darker shade of red and more of the obvious flame showing but it's still pretty both ways. I was warned this polish stains but it didn't really stain for me which was a plus. I wasn't over the moon with this design but I didn't hate it either. I spent way too much time figuring out what to do.

I would like to revisit the idea of red nail art in the near future. I didn't give it as much love as I should have.

Good morning. I am a bit behind in this post as the challenge actually started on the 1st of September. I have been participating just not blogging about it. Today I will be making several posts to catch myself up to speed.

What exactly is the 31 day nail art challenge? Every day for 31 days a different theme or idea is given and the participant must create nail art to match. This is the 3rd year this has been going on. There is a hashtag for this year's event to show your art off #31dc2013. Here is a list of the challenges.

Since I change my polish pretty much every day anyway I am confident I can get through this! What I am looking forward to is pushing myself to think outside the box and also get outside my own comfort zone.